What makes people think that they can be Indians? Just because you know what a sweat lodge is, what makes you think you know how to run one? Desperate people looking for answers give up a pile of money and then end up in the hospital, or the morgue.

When you tell people that you have great wisdom, you tell them you know exactly what you’re doing, you tell them you know what’s wrong with them and can fix them, you tell them they need to challenge themselves and break out of their former personalities, make them fast and cram them into a plastic-coated sweat lodge, people will get hurt. Time for Ray to go to jail.

Sweat Lodge Death Investigation Turns to Self-Help Guru James Arthur Ray

PRESCOTT, Ariz. (CBS/AP) Police have now turned their attention to television self-help guru James Arthur Ray in their investigation of an Arizona sweat lodge ceremony that left two dead and 19 hospitalized.

Kirby Brown

Yavapai County Sheriff Steve Waugh said Saturday that his detectives were focusing on the self-help expert and his staff as they try to determine if criminal negligence played a role in the tragic deaths at the Angel Valley Retreat Center in Sedona, Ariz., on Oct. 9…

Waugh said Ray refused to speak with authorities and has since left the state…

Ray claims to help people achieve both spiritual and financial wealth. “The real key to creating the life of your dreams is achieving true Harmonic Wealth®,” he says on his Web site, trademark included.

The self-styled success guru says people are ready for his wisdom if “You simply (and deeply) want to make more money and become more successful” and “want to double, triple, even multiply by ten the size of your business.”…

Ray and his staff constructed the temporary sweat lodge with a wood frame and covered it with layers of tarps and blankets, Waugh said. The sweat lodge — a structure commonly used by American Indian tribes to cleanse the body and prepare for hunts, ceremonies and other events — was 53 inches high at the center and about 30 inches high around the outer edges.

Between 55 and 65 people were crowded into the 415-square-foot space during a two-hour period that included various spiritual exercises led by Ray, Waugh said. Every 15 minutes, a flap was raised to allow more volcanic rocks the size of cantaloupes to be brought inside…

Joseph Bruchac, author of “The Native American Sweat Lodge: History and Legends,” called the number of participants in the lodge “appalling.”

“If you put people in a restrictive, airtight structure, you are going to use up all oxygen,” he said by phone Saturday from his home in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. “And if you’re doing a sweat, you’re going to use it up that much faster.”

American Indian sweat lodges typically hold about 12 people and are covered with blankets made of natural materials, such as cotton or wool, and the air flow isn’t restricted, he said.

“I don’t see how the person running that lodge could have been aware of the health and well-being of that many people,” he said.

The participants had fasted for 36 hours as part of a personal and spiritual quest in the wilderness, then ate a breakfast buffet Thursday morning. After various seminars, they entered the sweat lodge lightly dressed at 3 p.m.

Two hours later, a woman dialed 911 to say that two people, whom Waugh identified as 38-year old New Yorker Kirby Brown and 40-year-old James Shore of Milwaukee, did not have a pulse and weren’t breathing.

Liz Neuman: Third Person Dies In Arizona Sweat Lodge Case